


the goose and the wren

by Numaix



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Numaix/pseuds/Numaix
Summary: mostly just expositional progression of how i think y'shtola's relationship with my warrior of light (a miqo'te rogue named star catcher) has evolved
Relationships: Y'shtola Rhul/Warrior of Light
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	the goose and the wren

Y'shtola had always felt remote in some way, since the day she first showed up behind Star, at the mouth of the cave, unintentionally preceding a vision of Hydaelyn. Star's first impression of her had been "strange" -- though she was nondescriptly dressed she was clearly not of these rugged surrounds; her seaglass blue-green eyes with that sharp glint of sentience, a living intelligence that ticked restlessly even through her carefully polite demeanor. And the curling purple script tattooed along the curve of her neck, and her odd intricate device with its gauge and glinting lens. Even having known of her for a time, having traversed the land intersecting paths with hers on occasion, having witnessed her aiding the people or while herself offering such assistance (and having experienced the warm glow of pleasure in being acknowledged by her), having received of her comradery in battle - having fallen into a pleasant familiarity seeing her again and again in separate places, kindred but unreadable soul to hers, on a parallel road, it seemed, Star could not make sense of her at all. 

In eventuality she would come to be informed of the meaning behind the tattoo and the device, the somewhat old-fangled way of speaking (a scholarly dialect befitting an esteemed Archon, as she had later learned of her companion with a strange sheepishness, but not surprise), and the secretive organization and inner circle of which she was a representative. Even so, long deprived of all these enigmatic parts, Y'shtola Rhul remained to her a mystery. An untouchable one at that - she was possessed of an essential dignity that something so base as physical contact would be an irreverence of, so it felt. The simple notion of touching her in general seemed awkward. Even her long standing companions, joking or conversing with her as they might, maintained an amiable but respectful berth around her, out of no particular mandate of her own. It was unbidden code, in the way that Minfilia might, laughing, gently touch even Urianger's arm in a gesture of solidarity - ghostly, somber Urianger. But for Y'shtola she would afford only a friendly nod, thinking nothing consciously of this disparity.

It was for this that Star, seized with a nightmare of massacred Scions in the aftermath of recent horror, stumbled sleepless and shocked out into the balcony, into the cold night air, and saw Y'shtola there, looking up into the dark sky scintillating with its cosmos - their threads once again crossing by incident; she'd asked to sit beside her. It was a beautiful night, despite everything. Y'shtola's eyes were faintly aglow in the moonlight. All of her nausea had compressed in Star's stomach and in her throat, a weighing sensation that her mind floated bodily from, untethered. The almost palpable warmth of Y'shtola's presence beside her anchored and dazed her in equal measure -- it was a more pleasant lightheadedness, that it felt as though she had slipped into another dream, but for the near electric energy of her nearness.  
Y'shtola asked softly if she could not sleep, and Star confessed she couldn't. She asked what Y'shtola was doing up herself, and Y'shtola responded on her simple fondness for the stars - she pointed constellations out to her singular but attentive audience, alluding to ancient fables the likes of which Star, with all of her rough and tumble alleyway upbringing, found crude likeness in in the indulgent, low-brow stories of love and violence she herself had been exposed to. When she shared this, half expecting her reserved acquaintance to be disgusted by such a comparison, Y'shtola merely smiled at her with genuine fondness, such that her eyes crinkled and the celestial light glimmered in her irises (now Star felt dizzy). Her thoughts were yet not fully present - though this was not uncommon with her, with her perpetually racing mind. The truth was that Y'shtola could not sleep as well, but this was something she did not find necessary or productive to admit now to the Warrior of Light who sat alongside her now with her tail curled around her ankles, stargazing with no small wonder. Sympathy and distraction, she believed, would be more beneficial in this case than mutual rumination on an irreversible calamity. It had left its mars on her mind as well. So they sat together in their tangible proximity, looking skyward. 

\---

Of note about Y'shtola, post exiting the Lifestream for the first time, was as follows: 1) her irises were now colorless; 2) there was something simultaneously guarded about her demeanor, and yet very subtly, indescribably softer at the same time, manifesting largely in that 3) she initiated _touch_ with surprising frequency. She put a hand gently to Star's wrist when first addressing her, looking at her generally but not fully in the eyes, and from this Star was already beset with a sinking sensation of utter dread - not that Shtola was blind, but that she saw fit to conceal it from everyone else. And yet she had become someone no longer with an aura of utter irreproachability; she often reached for Star, or squeezed her hand or, once, sitting by her, wrapped her tail around Star's ankle, as if to assure herself that Star was truly there. And yet she was ever more distant, so hells-bent on committing to all fights alone, self-destructively consuming her own life aether, that she might be granted aetheric 'sight'. 

Y'shtola had always seemed thoroughly disinterested in pursuing romance, a factoid most disheartening for Star, who was by now at times overcome with longing affection simply looking upon her. She knew Y'shtola had been a rejector of many suitors, and that she found such attempts amusing in the best case scenario, if not sympathetically pitiful. When Star had first asked, long ago, in the Waking Sands, her rejection was no brutal evisceration - Star was not yet aware that such an outcome was a possibility, as she only later realized just how fortunate she had been - no, Y'shtola had been gentle and courteous enough, all things considered, especially given how clumsily Star had asked. The truth of it was that Y'shtola was not wont to let herself lean too far into emotions of the kind, finding them counterproductive to her current aims -- she was a busy woman and simply did not have the time of day to foster, let alone be attendant to, her own personal desires. The mission was foremost in her priorities, and while she of course was not devoid of any attachments and did indeed look upon Star with no small amount of fondness she could not permit such personal sensations to bias her, especially in the face of how essential the Warrior of Light was to their cause. This was more or less the somewhat apologetic but assured answer she had given Star, some time after her rejection of Magnai, when Star had nervously asked of her again, now acutely aware of the risk. Perhaps when this was all over (she silently doubted it could ever be), Y'shtola had said, she could consider such matters. Star was quick to assure her of her understanding, though Y'shtola could sense a warp in her aether, a slight concealed sadness in spite of herself. Y'shtola, though she kept it to herself and maintained her composure through and through, was mildly heartbroken. 

To be vulnerable around another was an unspoken aspect of the trouble. Y'shtola lingered not on it, but when she had spoken she had intended, in the closed heart of her chest, _Wait for me_. But she could not make such promises, and did not want to string Star along for something that might never resolve itself, she for whom Y'shtola had such high regards - she might die tomorrow or never have the courage otherwise (though she would never admit it was a lack of courage); she was too closed by habit, too accustomed to keeping her cards to her chest. To open herself up now, though not an entirely unpleasant prospect, was a foreign one to her. She had no desire to become reliant on anyone else.

\---

For Star, it had been but a brief window of passing since she had last seen Y'shtola when she again encountered her in the First. What she did not have the means to comprehend was that for Y'shtola, it had been a matter of years. When Y'shtola moved to embrace her, burying her face in Star's neck, Star could never be fully cognisant how much the gesture, outwardly contained as it was, was one of ardent desperation - the need to hold her solidly in her arms, this legend that had since become apparition in Y'shtola's memory, ignoring even the outrageous alienation of her distorted aether. When again they pulled apart, Y'shtola was a leader again immediately, recomposed in all formality, turning to address the assembled masses, though the fingertips of one hand lingered on Star's. Even so, the gesture felt demented - this looming aetheric spectre of Star's presence, she imagined, towered beside her, much more draconic and bestial in its amorphous form than anything the others were now witnessing. So easily, to her queasiness, interpretable as a sin eater. And yet its host was her Star.

\---

Something had changed in the course of their separation. At Slitherbough, after all tours and introductions, after a few days apart in the encampment, and the prior to their parting for the night, Y'shtola paused at the entrance to her chambers. Her voice, for all its nonchalance, belied a certain hesitance when she asked if Star would care to stay for the night.  
In previous incarnations of themselves Star may have been surprised, but an innate understanding had since strengthened between them that they silently, mutually desired to be near one another - an old yearning made all the more acutely real by distance and time and an exhaustion of for so long or of under such duress having been apart. What it meant in the long run was for the moment inconsequential. They were by now weary, worn thin by impending apocalypse, by old slain gods and friends alike, by doomed blistering darkless night, by souls taken from bodies. And they might yet lose it all tomorrow, or the day after. No longer did they have the energy to carefully construe projections of themselves about each other. And so Star quietly followed Y'shtola into her chambers.

Though before the others they behaved no differently in any other capacity, it became habitual, unspoken - Star entering Y'shtola's chambers in the evenings to have tea with her and emerging with her sleepily in the morning to partake in Runar's communal morning stew. If the other Scions noticed (they did), they refrained from comment. It was not something that they had been particularly privy to in the past, given the secrecy and repression of its past natures, but they had accrued enough subliminal suspicion by now that they ultimately did not question it when they observed its seeming development. 

It was not so much even for the sake of torrid conjoining - Star simply thought she had lost Y'shtola, and Y'shtola was, in the worst of her private thoughts, assuming she would lose Star to the disease of her aether. This she did not entirely voice. Most nights, fatigued, they would only huddle together, comforted simply by each other's presences, such that the thought of continued separation felt increasingly, wordlessly intolerable. 

Y'shtola had no desire to become reliant on anyone else. And yet at times when she was near Star she felt at times painfully reliant, and needy, and this she could not admit to even herself - this by compulsive instinct she must bury and never lend voice to, that she must not show any signs of. And then again she wondered if it would not be permissible, if only on occasion, to let herself go, for once. Would it truly be so wrong? she thought, as Star, unasked, stayed up late at night by dim candle light copying down recipes from a book onto parchment with aether oil, that they could be easier for Y'shtola to read. To hear Star call her "Shtola" so softly and naturally, as if she was not even personally aware of saying it, as though this small piece of her affection had slipped unfiltered from her. As Y'shtola spent her own nights sleepless, seeking out potential cures in the texts for whatever germinating light ailed Star, seeking any solution that might offer her relief - to which Star, seeing her so exhausted, would ask what she was doing that so possessed her, to which Y'shtola would conjure up with any decently intellectual sounding excuse to deter her from further asking (a lie). She would then resolve that it was, that it would be improper, and shelve the matter in the recesses of her mind, only for it to begin to surface residually again. Such was the cycle.

She would not admit it, but falling asleep beside Star was no small feat - it was an act, she recognized, of recklessness and of practical detriment in the broader scheme, flooding out all her senses. She was overcome by the sensation of a Lightwarden being so close, within the camp, and in restless nights she would shift and roll onto her back, her body prickling hotly with the alarm of it. It was only Star, asleep, snoring softly on occasion. A flock of sin eaters might descend upon the camp and she would not be able to tell; Star's nearness was blinding to her, and this too troubled her, who had so prided herself on her vigilance. This was an entirely selfish decision on her behalf, she thought. And yet for this she could find little reproach for herself. She had for so long denied herself any trace of happiness. 

Star adored her - this much she knew. For what, she would never be able to understand. Star who had triumphed against gods, who had accomplished innumerable wonders. She could have had anyone in all the realm. And yet she... even to think of it at times beggared belief. 

And now, as long as she could not truly sense anyway, Y'shtola lessened her sight and watched the dim glow of the surrounding aether surrender itself to nothingness, so that she might at least have respite. Very rarely had she permitted herself this entire blindness - a chance she would not normally take, and that she felt for a moment terribly vulnerable for. But Star's presence lent her assurance for this recklessness, a safety, though she would never admit to it. But Star would be overwhelmed with joy to know of it, to know that Y'shtola was even for a moment, in these small and great strides, relinquishing her hold on her sight, no longer burning out her own lifespan (a long held, anguished concern of Star's, when she learned how Y'shtola was 'seeing', that Y'shtola nevertheless had not swayed on it) - how she would scoop Y'shtola up in all her delight. But that was only indulgence to think about. Besides, it was hardly something worth waking her up about.

Perhaps tomorrow.

\--- 

Picking herbs and flowers together all afternoon into the sunset for poultice, after the chaos of Amaurot, under the gorgeously orange sky as it broke over Rak'tika Greatwood. Star, seeking the plants out by Y'shtola's guidance and description, wading through grass up to her knees by the river, proudly bringing them back to Y'shtola. Y'shtola with their large wicker basket (far overfull due to Star's enthusiasm), herself scouring more carefully through the land around her. In the aftermath of it all, she knew Star would live, and the immeasurable relief had collapsed into a still-lasting (though, she knew, ultimately temporary) kind of bliss. Star's aether was once again Star-shaped. If she allowed herself to strain to see - a luxury of only a few seconds - she could make out the rough outline of Star's ears or her shoulders in the aether, the rough approximate shape of someone she would have easily expended all her life aether for. But no, this could be a luxury of a few seconds only. 

Y'shtola commented, at last, on the lateness of the day. "I should think this a sufficient amount. Shall we return, my dearest?", and Star's eyes welled up with tears, to be referred to this way by her. 

Y'shtola paused, somewhat taken aback, as she registered Star's silent but - to her - perceptible shift in demeanor. “Oh, come now,” she chided gently, teasingly, cupping Star's face in her hand and wiping them away with her thumb. “Did you truly think me so uncaring of you?”

“Sorry,” Star said, ashamed of her own emotionality.

“Nay,” Yshtola said, with sudden, resolved sincerity, shaking her head. “The fault is mine.”


End file.
